Waldner: USC’s Marqise Lee is ready to bounce back

It seems painfully obvious this is a lost football season for USC and beleaguered Trojan coach Lane Kiffin following the gut-wrenching loss to Washington State.

“We didn’t play as good as we wanted to play,”Lee volunteered. “But it happens.”

So it is that the student becomes the teacher. The voice of reason is provided by a college junior.

“That’s one thing I learned growing up,” Lee said. “It happens. It depends on how you bounce back from it.”

Are the Trojans up to the test? Is Kiffin up to the test? We’ll find out as the still-young season unfolds.

”You took a hit that you didn’t want to take,”Lee said, talking more to himself than the fellow with the recorder. “Now bounce back and worry about the next game.”

This is a young man who has known adversity far beyond dealing with the loss of a football game.

A football loss is minor compared to the times as a youngster when Lee did not have a home, when he bounced around the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services system.

The paying customers all but rioted to express displeasure with Kiffin’s pet play, the bubble screen.

There is a touch of irony the play that put Washington State in a position to kick the winning field goal was a bubble screen.

Lee is not prepared to join the lynch mob. “For me personally, I think Kiffin is a great coach,”he said. “He put me in the situation I’m in now.”

The former Serra High star is the reigning Biletnikoff award winner as the best college receiver in the country.

That was then. This is now. Lee has gone from electrifying to unplugged, courtesy of USC’s don’t-dare-attack offense.

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Somewhere along the way, someone said Kiffin was an offensive mastermind. His body of work says otherwise. He stubbornly insists on calling plays, which prevents him from dealing with the big picture during games.

This is a coach who is stuck in a rut of his own making. Counting three running plays that actually were backward passes, quarterbacks Cody Kessley and Max Wittek threw 24 passes against Washington State. Ten were to receivers at or behind the line of scrimmage. That’s 42 percent of the passes thrown. Add nine more that did not travel farther than 10 yards beyond the line of scrimmage. That’s 79 percent of the passes thrown. That’s far, far too many short passes, which is what prompted the boos.

A footnote is while fans want to drive Kiffin out, they are likely to be driving recruits away, as they did when Brian Kelly was a highly recruited defensive lineman at South Torrance High.

He was planning on playing at USC until he attended a game during which the home crowd booed the Trojans. He found it so distasteful he switched to UCLA.

When Arizona fans booed the Wildcats back when Larry Smith was their coach, Smith went ballistic and told the fans to stay home.

Asked about the boos in the Coliseum, Kiffin quipped, “We’re getting used to playing on the road.”

Much more personal were the “Fire Kiffin” chants, heard first from the student section and then from all sections of the stadium.

“You can’t worry about that,”Kiffin said. “I think I heard those before the game in warm-ups. So I’m getting used to it.”

He chuckled ever so slightly, perhaps because he realized this was a rare occasion when he showed a little of his hidden personality.

In contrast to Smith, Kiffin was calm, he was collected, he was cooperative. And, yes, he was polite. No yelling. No screaming. No pouting.

Disenchanted fans would like to see some of his hidden offense Saturday against Boston College. Better yet, they would like to see Kiffin gone and the program turned over to an interim coach until Steve Sarkisian or Jack Del Rio can be hired.

A recommendation to fill the slot on a temporary basis would be former USC coach John Robinson. While Kiffin will not endorse this plan, he is not dodging blame for what happened against Washington State.

“We obviously weren’t prepared enough,”he said.

Asked what he would like to change, he did not sugarcoat his response.

“First of all, when you don’t play well, of course it falls on the head coach,”he said.

Lee wants to save the head of his coach. “You always have to keep a positive mindset and keep pushing,”he said. “This thing happened. You’ll have it on your mind for a couple of hours. Then you’ll move on.”

Life is a lot tougher than losing a football game.

“That’s what people do not understand,” Lee said. “A game is a game. I learned a lot of things as a child. So I’m going to continue to work. And that’s all positive.”

Clearing out the notebook

History lesson: UCLA football coach Jim Mora closed practice and shut down interviews with players to allow them to grieve on their own terms following the death of receiver Nick Pasquale, who was struck by a vehicle in San Clemente. Paul Westhead took the opposite approach when he was Loyola Marymount’s basketball coach. In the wake of the death of Hank Gathers, he let the players use interview sessions as a way for them to talk about their grief and in doing so deal with it. Etc: Without fanfare, Mora spoke to an overflow crowd at San Clemente High Sunday evening to honor Pasquale. Update: Nick Ekbatani, the former UCLA offensive lineman out of South Torrance High and Harbor College who lost part of his left leg due to a motorcycle accident, has gone over to the other side. He’s a student at USC’s graduate school of business and “really enjoying it.” This said, It is safe to assume that on November 30 when UCLA faces USC in the Coliseum, Ekbatani will be rooting for the Bruins. Bottom line: Rather than blame manager Mike Scioscia for the sad state of the Angels, owner Arte Moreno should be looking in the mirror.